I've finally reached the end of my quest to build a pc that is quiet enough to live next to my desk and still run at an acceptable temperature. It has taken about a year to reach this point. I'm on the second waterblock and third radiator since the beginning of the journey. Along the way I've discarded a homemade maze style copper waterblock, a Toyota Supra heater core, and the Tower of Cooling Power. The tower was a good performer, but I wanted a radiator that blended better into the room.

The computer system:

ECS K7S5A motherboard

Athlon 1.4 GHZ CPU

256 Mb DDR RAM

80 Gb Barracuda IV hard drive

Plextor 12/10/32A burner

Generic 48X CD ROM

Generic floppy

Aopen GeForce 2 video card

Generic case

300 watt Codegen power supply-fan replaced with 80mm Pc Power and Cooling "Silencer"

The cooling system:

Copper/Acrylic jet impingement waterblock

Copper tube passive radiator

Two channel temperature-dependent fan controller

Danner MagDrive 2 pump

1/2" ID vinyl and silicone tubing

One gallon of distilled water

The radiator is a relatively simple design adapted from copper tube radiators built by others. There are two 3/4" copper tubes 96" long with a 45 degree elbow and hose barb on each end. One tube has a tee with a hose barb mounted vertically to connect to the resevoir.

The tubes ready for painting.

The tubes with a coat of black paint.

The pump box is made from 1/2" mdf and covered on all inside surfaces with carpeting to silence the pump. The pump is suspended from two stretch cords and connects to two hose barbs with short lengths of silicone tubing inside the box.

The fan controllers are a modification of this circuit. I added a resistor to each side of P1 to stretch the control range and a capacitor across the fan to stop 'growling' at low speeds. One thermistor is stuck into the fins of a Zalman passive heatsink on the video card and controls a 92mm fan blowing on the video card and hard drive. The other thermistor is hanging in the case and controls a fan blowing into the psu.

Back to the radiator... Here is the pump side of the installed system showing the pump box, resevoir, and tubing connections.

The computer side.

The entire system with the radiator mounted below the fireplace.

The computer has been on for three hours of surfing and writing this post and the temperature reported by MBM5 from the motherboard is 42 degrees C. A couple of hours of Half-Life will raise the temperature to 44 degrees C. The pump is completely silent and the fans have spun up so I can hear them now, not loud, just barely audible. The TV or quiet music will easily drown them out.

I'd be a little worried about the pump overheating though, how are the temps on it?

I just stuck my hand in the box and felt the pump. It's warm, but not so hot I'd worry about it. It's been on now for almost three and a half hours. I ran this same pump in the same box for the last three months. No problem yet. I think there's enough space in the box to allow the heat to dissipate.

Nice setup. As I was going through the pics I thought it was going to really stick out on that fireplace hearth, but with the speaker where it is, the radiator and pump box almost disappear into the background.

Good looking shepherd, too. Played with the frisbee but didn't stick around for the spray painting

What's the control panel in your top 5.25" bay?

Be careful running it when you have a fire going, it might do exactly the opposite of what you want.

Nice setup. As I was going through the pics I thought it was going to really stick out on that fireplace hearth, but with the speaker where it is, the radiator and pump box almost disappear into the background.

Thanks, I try to keep the spouse approval factor in mind when trying new designs.

Quote:

What's the control panel in your top 5.25" bay?

That's an NEC stereo amplifier I use for the rear channel speakers. The front pair run on a Soundcraftsman EQ/Preamp and Harman Kardon Citation amp with an 8" powered subwoofer.

Quote:

Be careful running it when you have a fire going, it might do exactly the opposite of what you want.

The pump has been on for three and a half hours with the probe against the side of the pump body. It's reading 34C. No worries. It does have a little rattle, but with the pump box cover on I cannot hear a thing.

Any good at plastering? For your next plan, you could put those pipes in the wall behind the comp, plaster and paint over where they are, and have that pump located upstairs in the spare room or something! Then you wouldn't have to bother with a silenced pump enclosure, and it would be totally invisible!

My first idea was to run the tubing radiator, res, and pump in the room behind the fireplace. That would have meant drilling two holes through concrete block. I've done it before and didn't feel like doing it again. As it was, I had to drill eight small holes into the brick to mount four pipe straps. I started with a 5/32" carbide drill in a Sears drill, but at the third hole I hit a hard spot. When the going got hard, I pushed harder. The drill got about 1/8" into the brick and the carbides fell off.

By now the hardware stores had closed and I was on a mission to get those holes in and the system running. The other carbide drill I had was 1/4", so I abused the brick with that for about 10 minutes. Giving up, the only thing left to do was to try drilling into the mortar between the bricks. I've done that before and it went fairly easily. The only thing was the bricks on this fireplacewere held together with concrete that only looked like mortar.

By the second hole, I hit a stone. The only way to get the holes in was to move the back of the drill in a circle while drilling. An hour later all eight holes were about 3/4" deep. My back still hurts.

Here's an interesting link that shows a cooling system with a tank/radiator buried in the ground.

But when I finish off the last 16 pictures on the camera you will all appreciate the fine quality of my work.

Okay my work is completely devoid of quality, but you will appreciate the beauty and functionality o fmy maze of tubing and hose barbs.

I'm running into a small problem though- after splitting the flow 3 ways, the flow rate in each brach isn't enough to get out all the bubbles so the tubing is covered in little bubbles. Fortunatly my airtrap works just fine so none of that air gets to the pump, air in pump = cavitation = major noise.

I'm curious to see this setup now, gotta get snapping Zentar.
Sorry for highjacking your thread Joe Is your block homemade Joe? If so do you have pics posted anywhere?
Pretty good temps for a 1.4 Athlon on a fanless rad system also:D

Haggis Writes: Pretty good temps for a 1.4 Athlon on a fanless rad system also

Thx. I changed the fan setup today and got rid of the 80mm fan blowing through the power supply and the 92mm fan blowing on the video card and replaced them with a 120mm fan sucking air through a duct mounted to the bottom of the case. You can't see the power supply in the next picture, but it now has a hole in each end of its case and the air flows through. No fan other than the 120mm fan on the bottom of the case.

The picture shows the inside of my case. Waterblock near the top, hard drive on the bottom left, fan on the bottom right, and fan controller on the right.

I managed to do it all without hurting myself. The CPU temperature is 42C, but the case temperature has gone from from 27C to 33C. I thought I smelled scorched electronics for a while, but it has gone away now.

Here are some Solidworks renderings of the waterblock. The top piece is 1/2" thick acrylic, middle is 1/4" thick acrylic, and the bottom is 3/16" thick copper. Not shown are the four #6 cap screws holding it all together and two o-rings that seal it.

In this view you can see the jet tubes. There are 31 of them 1/16" ID x 9/32" long. They are brass hobby tubing from Menards pressed into the middle piece of the block.

It was done with a cheap drill press and a router. Had to work with what tools I have. I did buy the drill press just before starting the block.

Had my first leak today. One of the ends of a vinyl tube started leaking. From use it had expanded a little on the barb. Luckily I had some spring clips to seal it with. Not enough clips to do the whole system, though. Have to go shopping for some more tomorrow.

Great job on the block Joe. I guess you used your router and a template to do the o-ring grooves and the water transfer passages in the acrylic.

Do me a favour though, please,please get yerself some cable sleeving Your first photograph made me go "wow", nice block
The next one made me go "omfg" The slight smell of burning was probably a wire you snagged when putting the side back on your case. lol

lol...You're right about the messy cabling. lol again. I try to arrange them neatly, but can't seem to spend the time to get them looking better. Someday I'll origami the drive cables and spiral wrap everything else,

The routing of the block was done with a template. I only ruined two pieces of acrylic before finishing.

Interesting question, but I'm not sure it would be that big of a problem.

There is a lot of thermal mass between the fire and the radiator pipes, and the pipes are downhill from the fire.

My limited experience with fireplaces is that the hearth stones don't get that warm unless the fire is burning for a really long period of time (days) In that case, I would expect ambient to be a bit lower than normal (after all, if it was warm you wouldn't have been building a fire would you? )

If joesgarage11 had put the rad pipes ABOVE the fireplace (say under the mantle) I would see it as a real potential problem, since that area gets HOT, but I wouldn't expect it to be a big deal unless the fire place is being used almost constantly as the sole source of heat.

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